Arusha's fabric market

Today we went to the fabrics market in Arusha. We went with the daladala and then needed to walk for half an hour, but even with seven pair eyes we went to the wrong bus stop! So 1.5 hours later, we came to the market.
It was really beautiful, little stalls al over the street, the most beautiful colors and people shopping and selling there stuff everywhere.

Some stalls were just mountains of clothes, others were neatly hung on the millimeter. We watched everything, piece by piece, this took 6 hours, 6 hours on the market just watching beautiful patterns. Everybody loved it. Now, at the end of this day, we’re all lying exhausted on the couch.

The fabrics are mostly 6 inches, you pay 25000 Tanzanian Shillings for this, it’s +/- $10. The Tanzanian people see us as tourist and sometimes asked 55000 shilling for the fabrics! We just said that they can’t fool us and we live here so we know the prices. Most of the sellers laughed and indeed agreed to the price of 25000.

Not everyone reacted the same, some people got mad, some people just kept nagging and following us but in the end it was a very great day. Almost everyone in the city greets us and people are in general very open and helpful to us. Especially when you are with two people or alone they really want to help you if you have any questions.

With our beautifully colored fabrics we are going to make our personalized own clothes. Wel... we won’t but a seamstress will. She will come to our house, take our sizes and make whatever kind of clothes we want from the fabrics. I will show you the result soon!

Another fun fact I like to tell you is the mannequins here... back home in Holland, the fashion ideal is skinny, just always skinny, people are trying to get rid of this ‘fashion ideal’ but still, the mannequins in the shops, and in magazines are always skinny.
Here it’s different, the mannequins have huge hips, and behinds... I think one of the Dutch mannequins can fit two and possibly tree times in the mannequins here in Arusha! Here I have a picture from one of the behinds. More will follow when I visit the market again...